The family is the heart of the Church. Let us today raise from this heart an act of special entrustment to the heart of the Mother of God.
In the Jubilee Year of the Redemption we want to confess that love is greater than sin and all evil, which threatens man and the world.
With humility let us invoke this love:
1. "Under your protection we seek refuge, Holy Mother of God"!
Speaking the words of this antiphon, with which the Church of Christ has prayed for centuries, we stand before you today, Mother, in the Jubilee Year of our Redemption.
We find ourselves united with all the pastors of the Church, in a special bond, constituting a body and a college, just as by Christ's will the apostles constituted a body and a college with Peter.
In the bond of such unity, we utter the words of this act, in which we wish to encapsulate, once again, the hopes and anxieties of the Church for the contemporary world.
Forty years ago, and then again ten years later, your servant, Pope Pius XII, having before his eyes the sorrowful experiences of the human family, entrusted and consecrated to your Immaculate Heart, the whole world and especially the peoples, who by their situation are particular objects of your love and solicitude.
This world of men and nations is also before our eyes today: the world of the second millennium that is coming to an end, the contemporary world, our world!
The Church, mindful of the words of the Lord: "Go . . . and teach all nations . . . Behold, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world' (Mt 28:19-20), has revived, in the Second Vatican Council, the consciousness of her mission in this world.
And therefore, O Mother of men and peoples, you who know all their sufferings and their hopes, you who maternally feel all the struggles between good and evil, between light and darkness, that shake the contemporary world, accept our cry which, moved by the Holy Spirit, we address directly to your Heart: embrace, with love as mother and servant of the Lord, this human world of ours, which we entrust and consecrate to you, full of concern for the earthly and eternal fate of men and peoples.
In a special way we entrust and consecrate to you those men and nations, who are in particular need of this entrustment and consecration.
"Under your protection we seek refuge, Holy Mother of God! Do not despise the pleas of us who are in trial!
2. Behold, as we stand before you, Mother of Christ, before your immaculate heart, we wish, together with the whole Church, to unite ourselves to the consecration which, out of love for us, your Son made of himself to the Father: "For their sake," he said, "I consecrate myself, that they also may be consecrated in truth" (Jn 17:19). We wish to unite ourselves with our Redeemer in this consecration for the world and for mankind, which, in his divine heart, has the power to obtain forgiveness and to procure reparation.
The power of this consecration endures for all time and embraces all men, peoples and nations, and overcomes every evil, which the spirit of darkness is capable of awakening in the heart of man and in his history, and which, in fact, it has awakened in our times.
Oh, how deeply we feel the need for consecration for humanity and for the world: for our contemporary world, in union with Christ himself! The redemptive work of Christ must be shared by the world through the Church.
This is manifested by the present Year of the Redemption: the extraordinary Jubilee of the whole Church.
Be blessed, in this Holy Year, above every creature You, servant of the Lord, who in the fullest manner obeyed the divine call!
Be hailed you, who are wholly united to the redemptive consecration of your Son!
Mother of the Church! Enlighten God's people on the paths of faith, hope and charity! Enlighten especially the peoples whose consecration and entrustment you await. Help us to live in the truth of Christ's consecration for the entire human family of today's world.
3. In entrusting to you, O Mother, the world, all men and all peoples, we also entrust to you the very consecration of the world, placing it in your motherly heart.
Oh, immaculate heart! Help us to overcome the menace of evil, which so easily takes root in the hearts of people today and which in its immeasurable effects already burdens the present life and seems to close the paths to the future!
From hunger and war, deliver us!
From nuclear war, from incalculable self-destruction, from all kinds of war, deliver us!
From the sins against the life of man since its dawning, deliver us!
From hatred and from the degradation of the dignity of God's children, deliver us!
From every kind of injustice in social, national and international life, deliver us!From the easy trampling of God's commandments, deliver us!
From the attempt to obfuscate in human hearts the very truth of God, deliver us!
From the loss of the conscience of good and evil, deliver us!
From sins against the Holy Spirit, deliver us! Deliver us!
Receive, O Mother of Christ, this cry laden with the suffering of all men! Burden us with the suffering of entire societies!
Help us with the power of the Holy Spirit to overcome all sin: the sin of man and the "sin of the world", sin in all its manifestations.
May the infinite saving power of the Redemption be revealed once more in the history of the world: the power of merciful Love! Let it arrest evil! Transform consciences! In Thy Immaculate Heart may the light of Hope be revealed for all!
[Pope John Paul II, Jubilee of Families 25 March 1984]
